Thursday, May 26, 2011

Le Printemps

We had an extraordinarily severe storm here last night. It was the remnants of the destructive weather experienced in the U.S. midwest and although nowhere as damaging, it did give us torrents of rain and spectacular thunder and lightening.It is just the sort of weather that seems to follow the emerging blooms of peonies leaving them shattered and rain sodden. Only a few days earlier I was happy to see that the peony 'Le Printemps' was in bloom (also seen at this time in the header of this blog), in the middle of last nights storm I thought to myself "Well that's the end of that" and dreaded to see what I would find in the morning. But, as you see from this picture, 'Le Printemps' survived perfectly and looked untroubled by the weather of the night before.

'Le Printemps'was created by Victor Lemoine in 1905 by crossing P.lactiflora with P. wittmanniana. It is described as being cream yellow, but in my experience also has a pink blush. It is one of the earliest peonies to bloom and I first encountered it at Rendezvous Horticole at the Montreal Botanic Garden.

I think the species and primary hybrids seem to be more rain resistant. This true of 'Le Printemps' as well as P. veichii which is also starting to flower and survived last nights deluge. From last year I remember "Bartzella' weathered the storms with ease ( and hopefully the other Itoh hybrids that I've invested in recently).

As I write this the rain is pelting down again. What will tomorrow bring??